Adventure Magazine Cover — page 190: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

180 does he seem to know that the magazine follower (upon which the bottom cartridge rests) while strong, can be bent by a sudden, hard jolt, thereby crippling the magazine and destroying its effective- ness. Then the magazine spring sometimes becomes weakened through misuse and the user becomes dis- couraged with the jams that occur because the spring has insufficient tension to force the cartridges fully into the chamber. But nine out of ten jams are caused by the user’s unfamiliarity with the wea- pon or his carelessness with it. Remember the first time we smoked or chewed tobacco? Well, we shouldn’t condemn a thing because we don’t know how to use it. AsB0UT firing. One of the comrades of Camp- Fire recently commented somewhat sarcas- tically about hip firing. The best shots with the pe (automatic or revolver) can fire with accuracy rom the hip. It’s instinctive, just like pointing the finger without sighting. My granddad followed the trails of the West in its rawest period; my father before the law was enforced, and I have had friends and companions who had to be good shots with the pistol to survive the early days of the West. Most of them were unable to explain their accuracy and generally attributed it to luck. Here’s what the writer has discovered from those old-timers: Find the one spot of your hand between the last joints of the thumb and forefinger where the stock of the pistol rests to enable you to have one straight line from the muzzle to the elbow. Practise hold- ing that position until it becomes second nature and you'll very quickly be hitting around the bull’s-eye, and there is less strain and better shooting if you use this position with the forearm resting against the waistline or hip. Most instructors call this the grip, but it’s really more than the grip. It’s the position the old-time gunman had to practise—he ad to learn to get that position naturally just as quickly as his hand could yank the pistol out of his holster, which always hung low on his thigh. E best way to c the automatic ready for use is with chamber loaded and hammer drawn back and locked. Even should the safety lock be accidentally lowered, there are still two safety locks holding back the hammer which can not go forward until both are released. To use as a striking weapon, grip the “barrel”’ (or receiver) in the hand and strike with the rear sight, but the average blow means the undertaker. That is the best way to keep from damaging the weapon. There is a solid block of cold steel (ex- cept for the small hole drilled for the fiting-pin) just below the rear sight, and it protects against any damage to the pistol. Never strike with the stock or you'll ruin the magazine and probably damage the stock so the magazine will not go into the stock. A FEW more pointers about firing: Squeeze the trigger straight to the rear with the ball of the forefinger (not the joint) and without. deflecting the muzzle of the pistol. Nine out of ten men, even after practise, group their shots low and to the left. The conformation of the average hand causes the forefinger to pull down and to the left, although it is rarely noticed. It has to be combatted. But practice the “grip” first and you can depend on getting your man, | Adventure HIS rambling little talk is intended only as a defense of my greatest hobby, the Colt auto- matic pistol. And, after firing the German Luger (it’s really Belgian), I'll stand alongside of it any day with a .45 caliber Colt automatic and do more damage with just as much accuracy. I am not looking for free publicity, and natural modesty after such a know-it-all talk makes me hesitate to sign my name, but if the editor has any suspicion that I am one of those spineless conceited asses who is not proud of Camp-Fire, then I invite him to put it down entirely RAYMOND V. BERGEN. THs letter enclosed a poem dealing with = the mothers of wanderers. The poem, unfortunately, was not quite adapted to our needs, but the letter, because of its message to other wanderers, is published here: The enclosed is a thought that the writer set down while in a hotel room 1,500 miles from the grave of his mother. I am one of the first members of the old American Legion—way back in ’15 and have read Adventure when I could get it, all over the world. I’m sending it to you to see if you can use it— with the thought that perhaps some bird of passage like myself can read it and do some of ‘‘those things we have left undone” and make his mother happy now. I’m settled down now. This was caused by going back to the same room where I got the wire that my mother had passed on to the “great Adventure.” AVING voted for Prohibition, I am not to be arraigned as one who does not see and deplore the evil of liquor. But I have lived to regret my vote, for the old evil has not been removed but is in many ways worse than it was before, and the at- tempted remedy has brought us an even more serious evil in our growing disregard for law and lawfulness. The Eighteenth Amendment and Mr. Volstead’s application of it are accomplishing far more for anarchy than for temperance. They breed hypo- crites and pharisees as well as law-breakers, and have done more than anything else to strengthen our idiotic and ineffective habit of trying to cure evils by blithely passing a law against them when we can’t enforce the law we pass and when the only real remedy is a more fundamental one. While not agreeing with his views on various other matters, I quote from the New York Herald Tribune the outspoken opinion of Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University: If the Anti-Saloon League on the one hand, and the bootlegger and persistent lawbreaker on the other, had conspired together to bring nominal glory to the first and certain profit to the second, DOOLK ©